The wish

inspired by Debussy’s Rêverie

She’s here to say goodbye. To stock up on memories and use them — as a shield, a safety rope, medicine — once she crosses the threshold of the unknown. Her feet sink into the powdered road dust. Up ahead, the red rock she used to be scared of crumbles in the sun and her childhood, clutching its scraped knees, sits under its shade. To the left, the river murmurs some unhurried thought.

A dragonfly flutters its rainbow wings and leads her to the water shadowed by weeping willows. She finds the spot where once she came with her cousin — two kids with mulberry twigs and goose-feather floats — and the river gifted them a single minnow, a glistening treasure in the wet of her palm. She dips her fingers into the water and closes her eyes. Her happiest memory is a touch, a sound, a smell, a vision that flows in.

She sits there, sunk into the bliss. Her thoughts fly ahead in parallel motion, grounded here and mirrored above, suspended in wonder of what her life would be like where she’s going. Would there be rivers, sunny spots for reveries she could find herself in? A shadow crosses the sun on her eyelids, a cry slits the silence. It’s not a bird, but a spasm of fear. She’s about to leap into the rest of her life. She’s about to do it alone.

Something touches her hand, a cool, smooth sensation. She opens her eyes, hardly believing what she sees. A golden-scale river creature with a slender body alight with the sun on it — a fire under the water.

He swims into her palm and lets her scoop him up.

‘Make a wish and let me go,’ he says.

Drops of water drip from his face like tears.

‘Make a wish,’ he insists, ‘anything.’

She feels him tremble in her hand, understands his urge to return to the only world he knows.

Hardly formed in her mind, the words find her lips.

‘When life is the hardest, I wish to start again.’

‘And lose everything? The truths you’ve learned, the people you’ve loved?’

She shrugs, doesn’t know.

‘You can decide later. Let me go into my river and follow the current of yours.’

Suddenly heavy, he slips from her fingers. Sparkles rush in his wake, the willows quietly weeping.

***

She is so alone in the plane, crossing the vastness where all rivers gather. Night-blue stars sing a chorale. The world below is asleep; above the clouds, she’s but a speck. The fear grips her again. But she’s got her memories, her wish. A purple-orange line divides the sky into night and day. With the darkness behind, she flies into the light.  

Like laughter, life flows over mossy stones and shady pools, muddy shallows and white-water curves. She listens to tongues only rivers know and learns to understand them; she finds her new reflection in a sky-blue gaze. Children play with dragonflies along the sunny shores.

One day she hears the murmur of the other river, louder, warbling. Calling for her. She follows the sound, walks over the bridge of time. She doesn’t know how, but she’s back.

The red rock has long crumbled to dust. The pool is just deep enough to dip her hand in. She leans over, peers, and the river gazes back with the eyes of her mother, the softness on her eyelids, the worry wrinkles around her mouth. A glint ripples through her reflection. It’s the golden fish — a little slower, not a fire but a candlelight.

‘You still haven’t asked for your wish to come true.’ His voice is tired.

‘Life never got that hard,’ she says.

‘I’m old, can’t wait forever. Make your wish and let me die.’

He swims into her palm as she remembers the night-blue chorale of the stars, the sky-blue of her lover’s eyes. The children’s laughter.

‘You can go,’ she says and opens her fingers. ‘Anyway, thank you.’

‘For what? I did nothing.’ His pale gills tremble with age.

‘For letting me believe I could start again.’

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The music illustrating this story is performed by Alice-Sara Ott.